


The Fall and the Fury

by I_prefer_the_term_antihero



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Epilogue, Gen, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless Friendship, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III Angst, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III Needs a Hug, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and Dragons, Post-Canon, Post-How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25867594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_prefer_the_term_antihero/pseuds/I_prefer_the_term_antihero
Summary: Hiccup knew it was better to send the dragons away...but he may never fully recover from losing Toothless. The nights come with a fury unlike anything he knew before.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Nuffink Haddock & Zephyr Haddock & Astrid Hofferson, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless
Kudos: 26





	The Fall and the Fury

**Author's Note:**

> This fic actually has a story behind it, but it kinda spoils what happens in the fic, and is longer than the actual fic...so I decided to put it in a [reblog of this story on tumblr](https://i-prefer-the-term-antihero.tumblr.com/post/626649857089830912/the-fall-and-the-fury). I'd appreciate if you could check that out when you finish!  
> Long story short... I have a lot of emotions wrapped up in this fandom.  
> Also, Hiccup may be slightly OOC in this fic--well, just more angsty then he usually is, really XD--and the story behind the fic explains that. 
> 
> I’d absolutely love to write more for this franchise, though, so if you’ve got any prompts, send ‘em over!! I just don’t know what to write on my own XD
> 
> I’d really really appreciate if you could leave a comment!!! They really do make my week, and motivate me to keep writing!!

“There were dragons when I was a boy.” Hiccup tells his children dramatically.

“There were great, grim, sky dragons that nested on the cliff-tops like gigantic, scary birds.” He stands up holding his arm up high. “Little brown, scuttly dragons”—he scuttled his fingers along their legs, making them laugh—“that hunted down the mice and rats in well-organized packs.”—He mimicked a dragon chomping down on a mouse, by tickling their stomachs—“Preposterously huge sea dragons that were twenty times as big as the big blue whale.” He held his hands far apart.

“Did you have a dragon, daddy?” Nuffink asks softly.

He grins at the question. “Yes, I did.”—And behind the words is a joy unlike anything they’ve seen in their father before before—“He was the rarest of all. He was a _Night Fury_.” As the words rang, the wind seemed a little louder outside. “I called him—”

* * *

_Everything is blue; deep and navy, almost black; the sky, dotted with sparks, the waves below bouncing moonlight back up to them._

_The wind plays with his hair, and it seems the man in the moon is laughing. Hiccup lays on the dragon’s back, breathing out, staring up at the stars, and for a moment he is…perfectly happy._

_But that’s the thing about moments, about happiness._

_His breath is snatched from somewhere deep in his gut._

_The fall. Abrupt, and unending. Navy and white flashing by, and the dizziness is not from the spinning, but the fact that somehow, his best friend isn’t there to catch him._

_And as his dragon shrieks, looking, panicked, down at him, trying to catch up to him and, for once, failing… the two getting further and further away, until the dragon is but a black speck in the distance…it feels like Hiccup’s very heart is what’s being pulled from him. The strings between them unraveling, and they’ll surely sever._

_And somehow he knows he’ll never see him again._

When he wakes up it is in a sweat that is somehow cold, and that breath that he couldn’t find seconds ago is back with a fervor. And for a brief second he… wishes it wasn’t. That he wasn’t breathing, wasn’t here, wasn’t _now._

_“You have the heart of a chief, and the soul of a dragon.”_

That’s what his mother told him. One day. So long ago now.

There were dragons when he was a boy, but dragons…they’re not around anymore.

What is he now? The last of the dragons, left alone in this winter, unable to breathe the fire that will keep the cold at bay. It’s so very cold within this skin.

He wishes he could be there, with him.

He thought he was human. Once. Bred to kill dragons, when all this started, so long ago; on that night, when he shot down the most prized dragon of them all. That boy, all scrawny and weak, shaking as he held that knife, thought he was a killer. The thought is laughable now.

Though perhaps it is less laughable than the truth.

He thought he was human. He was wrong.

Maybe that’s what brought them together, what saved them both—(and perhaps it was what became their downfall too? Just how much he loved them, loved him—too much…)

He never thought their adventures would end. He didn’t think Neverland would come crashing down. …He was so young then.

Their lives were built around dragons. Killing them, then caring for them, befriending them, riding them. Without them their foundation cracked, their lives came crashing down. And he’s left here alone with a dragon’s soul, crying out for for his lost species. His thunder* left him here alone. The last of his kind.

And he wishes with everything inside him, that he could be human, for just one single day. Because it isn’t worth the way his soul burns.

“Sometimes I think I can hear him,” he says to his children, with a far-off look in his eye—which he casts out the window and into the night, hoping he’ll reel something in—telling them fairytales and ghost stories in tandem before bed. He hopes they don’t hear the pain lurking behind those words, the desperate longing fused to his irises.

He wants to introduce them to the dragons more than anything. He wanted them to grow up befriending the stars, and unafraid of the fall, too. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all; not what he lost, but what they never had.

Sometimes he thinks he can hear that fire and lightning, building power, violet in his throat, until it explodes. Sometimes he thinks he can hear that in the middle of the night.

Once it was such a terrifying sound; the sound of their doom, of houses exploding, of men and woman running for their lives, because this one wouldn’t come for the sheep…it would just shoot its blasts, and knock their world down, and glide away with the wind. Like the wrath of the gods. The fury of the night.

That sound became so comforting it makes his chest hurt to think of now. That longing becoming daggers through him.

So each time he hears it, he shoots up in bed, calling his name, only to find that it’s nothing. Just a figment of his yearning imagination.

Of course it’s nothing.

Sometimes he thinks he can feel it too—feel that fire burning in his own throat.

Until he realizes that’s just his own voice, burning out from screaming so long. And that his breath can create no more fire than words.

And make no mistake, words can be more flammable than a spark in a dry forest.

Sometimes he thinks he can feel him underneath him. His wings around him. Wind and fire and awestruck power. Chasing the daylight.

And everything is perfectly alright.

Until he falls. And falls, and falls. He falls a long time—and _surely he will catch me, he always does_ … before he realizes…he’s not there. So he wakes up, trying to ignore the sting in his eyes, the tracks that have surely stained his cheeks after so many of these nights.

That’s how all his dreams end now: falling.

He never feared that before. With the dragon by your side, there isn’t much to fear. Falling was once exhilarating—at least it is when you know you have someone to catch you. Now he knows what it is to really fall.

And he wishes the dragon was still right there in front of him, to comfort him, nudge him out of his sadness. Make him laugh, no matter how sad he is. Wishes he would wake up to see him laying on that rock he would light up with his breath so it would be warm. Wish upon the stars that can’t surround him anymore. To say it was all a nightmare and they never left.

Is this what growing up is? Is childhood but a dream, to be so harshly severed by the sunrise?

Then he looks down at his leg, like he did the first day they made a difference. The part of himself that’s gone. And it reminds him of too much. Of how they broke each other—(after all, they were supposed to be enemies)—and fixed each other all the same—(but they knew they didn’t have to be).

But he can’t fashion the missing piece of himself out of metal and good intentions this time.

(Now he’d sacrifice the rest of his limbs, if only he could get back his wings.)

Some nights it’s too much to bear, and as the memories tear him up from the inside out, he holds tight to the empty sheets, and finally whispers aloud, to the tempo of hollow heartbeats, and the name he gave him;

“Toothless….Toothless… _Toothless_ …”

**Author's Note:**

> *A group of dragons is called a "thunder." (Just learned that, and I love it XD)
> 
> Once again [here's](https://i-prefer-the-term-antihero.tumblr.com/post/626649857089830912/the-fall-and-the-fury) the link to the backstory behind this fic if you're interested!


End file.
